Circle Of Life

A common argument that people seem to have when I tell them about what I eat, and why, is "Eating meat, and death is kind of just the circle of life," or something to that effect. This is true. It is a dog eat dog world. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.

It is also worth noting that in this 'circle of life' people would die in harsh winters, without a way to keep warm. People would starve to death or be eaten by a predator should they break a leg. Chances are there would be no blind or deaf among us. Certainly no special ed left. Why? Because that would be the circle of life. A disability such as any mentioned above would render the person unable to care for themselves, and therefore they would die. So why don't they?

Because we have overcome the circle of life. With our highly developed brains capable reason and understanding and caring and compassion and love, we have found ways around the circle of life. In the same way that it should be no trouble to avoid this so-called 'circle of life' that means ruthlessly and unneccessarily murdering other species for various reasons.

So why haven't we? I feel that at this point, we are still a relatively primative species. We have the brains and the capability - but we are still exploring them.

Imagine an eight year old who has inherited billions of dollars. Essentially, an inexhaustible amount of money. He uses it to buy video game systems, toys, fun things for himself. As he grows older, he learns to invest it, use it in wise ways to better his life, and probably those of the people around him. I would say we are somewhere in between these two stages, maybe closer to the second. However, as this lucky person grows even older, he is exposed to people hurting, starving, suffering. He realizes that his money will do so much more good being used to help benefit the entire world, rather than just he.

At this 'stage' in 'life' we realize that the world isn't all about us. This incredible intelligence isn't for making us as comfortable and happy as we can be personally, it's not for shutting us away from the world, removing us from its problems. No. These brains unlock a world that other animals havn't got access to, because, primitive as we are, they are more primitive - not even producing the capacity to love or care or reason (or so it would seem. I suppose I don't know for sure).

For this reason, it must be us that set the example for everything else. We need to be the ones to make our own decisions, based on our own ability to think and reason, not a primal animals urges to eat and procreate. We need to set an example. We, with the highest developed brains and highly developed societies, need to be an example to lesser species - not the other way around. Eating meat because your cat does would be like a 15-year-old girl peeing her pants because her 1-year-old sister does it.

We have the ability to reason and think and love. We have the ability to realize the beauty, the purity, the freedom, and necessity, of living a life of harmlessness and non-injury. All we need to do now is realize that, no matter how much we love the taste of chicken quasadillas, or grilled salmon, what we really want is to make the world a better place - like they taught us when we were young: Leave it better than we found it.

❤